


Ulysses's Paradox

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Magical Realism, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 08:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3374957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For the longest time, John wishes he could dream."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ulysses's Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Jen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadspy), always.
> 
> Thanks to [Allison](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/wearitcounts) who is the best beta ever and without whom I wouldn't make sense at all.

There are two things John clearly remembers from his childhood. First, that his mother always used to bid Harry goodnight with a kiss on her brow and a whispered, "Sweet dreams." Second, that she never did this with John.

It’s not the apparent lack of affection John resents. It’s not the soft kiss, the shared smile, the intrinsic link John imagines must exist between a mother and a daughter. It’s the sheer alienation he feels when someone utters the word “dream” when he’s close enough to hear it. The sensation of being left out of something so foreign he can’t even begin to conceptualise it. He has read the books, of course, and he knows by heart all the legends and the fairy tales. He knows about dreams – enough to pronounce the word, enough to know that he’ll never be able to begin to grasp its meaning.

His mother kisses Harry’s brow and says “sweet dreams” and John wishes he knew how to dream too. He wishes he knew what dreaming felt like. The only thing he knows about dreams is that they’re the opposite of nightmares.

John knows how opposites work. Night is the opposite of day. Dark, the opposite of light. Nightmares the opposite of dreams. Since John prefers the day to the night, the light to the dark, he imagines he would prefer dreaming to having nightmares, too. As much as you can imagine wanting something you’ve never experienced.

For the longest time, John wishes he could dream.

\---

The legends start with Ulysses. They say that when he came back to Ithaca he didn’t know if he was living in a dream or a nightmare. In a way, it was a nightmare. There he was, back home, with nothing left to do but live his life until the end of his days. Gone were the adventurous days, gone were the sirens and the heavy perfumes of foreign cities. In a way it was a dream. A dream of days you can’t even imagine. A dream of home, of a peaceful place where to die, a dream that couldn’t uphold to reality.

That’s when it starts, the legends say. With Ulysses, who didn’t now whether he was having a dream or a nightmare, if he should be glad or crushed to be back home.

It’s not real, of course. Myths never are. You either dream or have nightmares, and Ulysses has nothing to do with that.

Most people still believe it though. And when you talk to them about dreams and nightmares and how you’re born having either one or the other, but never both, they tell you about the tale of Ulysses.

There is no definite ending to this tale. For some, Ulysses died of old age, not long after his dear wife passed away, surrounded by his loved ones. For others, Ulysses went back to sea and battled dragons, laughed in dimly lit taverns and finally felt alive again.

John always liked the second ending better. Maybe that’s why, when he comes back from Afghanistan, crippled and alone, he can only think of miraculously healing and going back into combat. If John weren’t born an ephialtes he would know that’s what dreams are.

But then, maybe it’s better not to know that if you could dream you would only dream of war.

\---- 

For years, diligently, John takes his allotted pill every morning. Even after he comes back from Afghanistan and spends most of his days thinking about the gun hidden in a drawer, he never allows himself to forget the pill. If he has to die, John thinks, he will die from his own hand; he will die choosing to do so. He won’t die because of biology; he won’t die from a nightmare he suddenly can’t distinguish from reality.

\----

The dreams vs. nightmares debate has torn philosophers apart since Plato suggested, in his famous _Symposium_ , that people are either born having dreams or nightmares because they’re part of the same soul that was divided at birth and that the only way to experience both is to find yours. Only then, he wrote, would your nightmares be able to become dreams and your dreams nightmares.

Most philosophers agree that there is no such thing as soul mates, and that Plato misunderstood the stakes of the debate, when what matters is the ontological question it presupposes, and how you can define yourself as a man, when an entire range of the human experience is not only foreign to you but utterly unattainable.

Theologians argue that the binary division is inherent to the condition of man, since Eve gave Adam the apple and forced him to make a choice between Eden and Earth. According to them, the Second Coming will free man from this arbitrary binarism and will allow him to live in a world where dreams and nightmares can coexist within one being.

Anthropologists argue that the dreams vs. nightmares division is the only common ground upon which every society has been built, and analyze the different responses to it. It is, according to them, clear that in most societies dreamers will tend to choose _ephialtes_ as life partners in order to build a society that relies on complements. `

John reads this in a journal one beautiful, cosy morning in Baker Street and scoffs.  Sholto was a dreamer and they certainly didn’t work out.

He looks at Sherlock and thinks about how Sherlock is an _ephialtes_ too. Sherlock who seems fascinated by The Woman who sells dreams – or so she says – Sherlock who’s drifting away from him, has been ever since Moriarty strapped John in semtex.

John wishes, for the first time in his life, that someone other than him could dream, that Sherlock could dream. So John could ask him, “What do you dream about?” and Sherlock would answer, “You.” And they would be happy, and his mum kissing Harry’s brow and murmuring “sweet dreams” wouldn’t matter anymore.

John turns his newspaper’s page before swallowing his daily pill.

\---

It can’t end like this. It can’t end now. The phone pressed against John’s ear seems heavier and colder than anything John has ever held or touched, its weight anchoring John in a reality he desperately wants to escape. This can’t be happening.

But Sherlock is saying “Goodbye, John,” and Sherlock is tossing his own phone away and Sherlock is falling and John can’t do anything, can’t move, can’t breathe.

This can’t be happening, yet it is.

The next morning, when John wakes up, he reaches for his pill, automatically. The pill he has been swallowing since he was old enough to remember – the pill that means he won’t have nightmares tonight, since he can’t dream.

John can’t even remember what a nightmare is. He can’t think of anything worse than Sherlock not being a part of this world anymore, than Sherlock being dead, and John having to live with this knowledge for the rest of his life.

John looks at the pill and puts it in the bin.

No nightmare can be worse than this.

~~Sherlock is dead.~~

\---

Linguists agree to say that the dreams vs. nightmares debate is unsolvable. Not that they didn’t try. They spent decades arguing about semantics and the idea that _ephialtes_ could understand what dreamers meant. 

Dreamers argued that they could understand the weight of having nightmares every night.

Both sides continue to swallow pills every morning. The former to stop having nightmares so horrible that they lose all grasp on reality and kill themselves, the latter to stop having dreams so beautiful that they lose all grasp on reality and never want to wake up again. ~~~~

 ---

John stops taking his pills in order to have nightmares again. Only, his nightmares turn into dreams.

He sees Sherlock falling – again and again. For a few, precious seconds, Sherlock is still alive and breathing and he takes so much space in John’s heart, in John’s head. And how could that be worse than Sherlock being irrevocably dead?

\--- 

In his nightmares, Sherlock falls. In his nightmares, Sherlock is lounging on the sofa, hair tousled and eyes bright, alive – so, so alive. In his nightmares Sherlock smiles at him. In his nightmare Sherlock is alive and doesn’t love him back.

John sleeps and has nightmares, again and again.

He begins to grasp what dreaming is. Dreaming is never wanting to wake up, and he doesn’t want to. It’s seeing Sherlock fall and knowing that reality will never be better than that because in reality Sherlock is dead and John didn’t save him.

Yes, that’s what dreaming is. Not wanting to wake up. John wishes he could see Sherlock falling for eternity.

\---

The word dreamer exists in every language, in every country, in every part of the world. There’s only one word for those who have nightmares – _ephialtes_. There are no translations, no equivalents. John often thinks about how unfair it is that he’s stuck with an epithet he never wanted nor recognised himself as, and that it defines him.

When you’re young, John thinks, it’s easy to see the difference, to understand the limit. When he was young he had a crush on Alice Morgan, who was a dreamer, and she explained all of it to him. She showed him the Dreamer’s Book and pointed at the pictures and said: “I’m never allowed to dream because dreams are better than anything else.”

John forgot this for years until he ended up in a rehab clinic, holding Harry’s hand and listened to her tell him:

“How can I live when I know everything will always be better when I’m asleep?”

For the first time in his life, John thinks he may have been lucky to be born the way he was.

\---

The doctor – “Call me Stan” – tells John he’s suffering from a rare ailment. _You think your nightmares are dreams_ , he says, _and you want to stay there forever, but they are only nightmares._

John wants to laugh. What difference does it make that they are semantically and biologically nightmares, when they have the same effect on him than dreams? What difference does it make, when instead of waking up gasping, reaching for his gun in despair, John wakes up gasping, reaching for someone who isn’t there, who isn’t in his bed and never will be?

The lines are blurring and John thinks it may be time to reread Plato.

Stan prescribes John more pills.

John bins them and keeps having nightmares of Sherlock falling. Only they are dreams.

\---

You can never escape it. There are posters, around every corner of every street telling you about the new romantic comedy.

There are pills sold on the black market, or more specifically drugs, guaranteeing that you’ll feel like a dreamer for a few hours. John knows Sherlock used to buy them. He never asked how it felt.

Was it easier? Was it less painful?

John knows, most of all, despite of all the romantic comedies and the “chick lit,” that dreams are a lie. He knows it because he saw his sister taking her daily pill less and less often and being pulled into a world of sleeping endlessly, where waking up was the hardest thing to do.

John knows how hard it is because that’s how he’s feeling now and if what he’s feeling is what dreamers feel he wishes he could erase the word dream from his vocabulary. `

\--- 

The truth is, they all forget what dreams and nightmares actually mean. They begin taking pills as soon as their brain is able to form memories and retain them. They don’t actually recall having nightmares or dreams. The only thing the brain retains is the ability to conceptualise an experience it has no memory of. Everything else fades into obscurity.

When he was at uni, John’s girlfriend asked him what it was like to be an _ephialtes_. He doesn’t remember his answer but he remembers suddenly feeling how inadequate all the words he could have used were. He remembers thinking that he could stay there, next to her, for hours, and try describing to her the utter sensation of loss and helplessness he felt when he thought about nightmares, but he would never be able to convey to her something he himself had forgotten about.

He recalls the distance he had felt growing between them, as if it were a physical crack, the fundamental incomprehension between them. He had broken up with her the next morning and had sworn never to date a dreamer again.

He had held his promise until he met Sholto and the disaster that had been their relationship had only convinced him he had been right.

That’s why, when he asked Sherlock, in a dimly lit Italian restaurant, the day after they met, if he was a dreamer or an ephialtes, he had felt so relieved to learn that Sherlock was like him. That had lasted for at least a few seconds before Sherlock had launched into his speech about being flattered but not interested.

And John had been fine with that, he really had. He could still look, and admire, and love and want from afar. He could still hope that maybe, one day, Sherlock would change his mind and see him, actually see him, and they would somehow fall into each other and would stay together forever.

Hope, John learns, is dangerously similar to dreaming.

\---

One year after Sherlock dies and John starts having nightmares  again, he meets Mary. John is nothing if not stubborn and while he continues binning his pill every morning, he’s determined that it will not prevent him from getting up and going to work and living. He’s not sure anyone else but him would call it living but considering that Sherlock is dead and John is still here, he decides it’s as close as he can get to it.

Mary tells him she’s an _ephialtes_ and that’s the only thing that gets John to agree to a date with her. Some people, John thinks, can be the embodiment of dreams and that’s exactly what Mary is. She’s nothing like Sherlock, she’s nothing like him, she’s alive and funny and witty and if sometimes it hurts to just look at her and suddenly think how wrong it is that she’s the one standing in front of him and not Sherlock, well. It’s not like John can bring people back from the dead and it’s not like John is actually going to give up.

So John starts taking his pills again and invites Mary to a fancy restaurant and is going to propose to her because, after all, she’s the best thing that could have happened to him now that Sherlock is dead.

Then Sherlock comes back.

\---

History books are full of anecdotes about a dreamer not being able to wake up and it being enough to change the future.

John read those and laughed. He actually went out there, on the battlefield, was in a war and knows that wars are about sand and dust and too-short nights and early mornings and being willing to do what no one else wants to do. He knows battles are won by how you don’t hesitate when it comes to pulling the trigger, when it comes to sacrificing yourself.

John knows all this and when Sherlock appears disguised as a waiter, John wonders if he finally has gone mad. If he’s lying somewhere in Afghanistan, on a battlefield and the war has actually been lost and he’s one of those _ephialtes_ who ruined their country’s chances by not being able to distinguish reality from their nightmare anymore. Maybe he is one of those lost soldiers, locked in a mental institution, having lost all grasp on reality. It would make much more sense than Sherlock being alive and having lied to John for two, long, neverending years.

Then John feels like he’s waking up from the longest nightmare and throttles Sherlock.

\---

At least, it should be like waking up from a nightmare.

But John just can’t tell anymore.

\--- 

Sherlock being back changes nothing, John thinks. 

(Except when John goes to Baker Street the next day, clean shaven and desperate to know if Sherlock has changed just enough during the past two years so that now he wants John back, except when John puts his hand on Sherlock’s knee and laughs and thinks that maybe Sherlock – but Sherlock doesn’t feel things that way.) 

So John marries Mary.

\--- 

One month after his wedding, John wakes up sweating in his bed. Mary’s hand is resting on his crotch and he can’t stand it, he feels sick and nauseated and he misses Sherlock so much his bones ache, his entire body is throbbing and desperately alive.

He stares at Mary as she tells him she’s going to the drug den with him and thinks about how quickly dreams turn into nightmares.

When Mary shoots Sherlock, John knows he was right.

\---

After Sherlock almost leaves him again and says his goodbye on a windy tarmac and John fakes being with Mary long enough for them to expose her as Moriarty’s second in command, John goes back to Baker Street.  

They’re sitting in front of the fire. Outside, the night is quiet. John is sipping his whisky slowly. Sherlock is still recovering and even though John moved back to Baker Street weeks ago everything between them still feels tentative and fragile – infinitely breakable.

“During the two years you were away…”

(They still dance around it. John can’t say “when you were dead” because if he did he would also say when I stopped taking my pills, when I wished I would never wake up, when I was missing you so much I thought having nightmares was better than living.)

John exhales.

“During the two years you were away, where there ever times when you couldn’t take your pill?”

 Sherlock opens his eyes and looks at John carefully.

“Why do you ask?”

“Just. Answer the question, please.”

“No, not always. There were times when I ran out of supplies before Mycroft was able to send me more, or I couldn’t reveal myself and get some. And then, there was the time I was captured.”

“Is that when you got your scars?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see them?”

“I…”

“Sherlock. Please.”

Sherlock makes the tiniest nod, and if John were a better man he would ask him again, make sure that this is freely given to him, but he also knows that Sherlock might change his mind and that such an opportunity might never present itself again. If there’s something John is good at it’s taking advantage of opportunities. He sits still while Sherlock divests himself of his jacket and his shirt. There’s nothing sexual about it and John is grateful for that. He knows what this is. Another apology in Sherlock’s seemingly neverending list of apologies. It’s quieter than Sherlock getting on his knees, begging for John’s forgiveness while their world is about to explode (a lie). It’s easier than Sherlock throwing himself into the preparations of John’s wedding, carefully labelling folders on his computer – “venues,”,“cakes,” “speech.” It’s less violent than Sherlock shooting a man – killing Magnussen.

It’s more honest than any of these things. In their flat, only lit by the dim flames of the fire, with no other noises than the sometimes-passing car outside, it’s just the two of them and Sherlock slowly revealing a time when he had no other choice but to face his nightmares.

When Sherlock is done, he stays still for a few moments. His clothes in his hands, he looks childish and lost, as if he’s not sure how to proceed.

Finally, Sherlock says: “You can come look.”

John nods and stands. The distance between their chairs is almost nonexistent but it seems essential not to rush things. He approaches Sherlock like he would a wounded animal. It’s not pity, though, that John feels. It’s reverence and gratitude, and relief.

The scars are white and ugly but it doesn’t stop John from wanting to touch them.

He lets his fingers linger lightly on Sherlock’s skin, an unspoken question. Sherlock nods again and John’s touch becomes firmer. He traces the patterns of Sherlock’s scars, barely daring to breathe.  He knows, deep inside of him, that he’s the only one who has ever been permitted to do that, to touch Sherlock’s skin, and the rush of possessiveness and power that comes with that knowledge leaves him almost breathless. In all the ways that count, Sherlock is his.

“How did you do it then?” John asks. “If you couldn’t take your pills, how did you survive the nightmares?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer immediately. John waits, fingers drawing idle patterns on Sherlock’s back, his eyes glued to the hair that curls over the nape of Sherlock’s neck. He wants to take those curls between his fingers and twist it, wants to feel the soft hair against his skin, wants so much but now is not the time.

Then Sherlock says, “The nightmares didn’t matter. Every time I woke up I knew…”

He stops. Exhales again.

“I knew why I was doing this. I knew what was at stake. That I was doing this so I could come back to you.”

And John feels like his heart is breaking, like he can’t take another breath without it consuming him completely. Everything that has happened until then seems like a nightmare, unreal and already fading and that the only reality, the only thing that has ever mattered is what is happening right now. Right now. So he says,

“When you were away I stopped taking my pills.”

Sherlock jerks and tries turning around, facing John, but John’s hand prevents him from doing so. He can’t face Sherlock, not now. He needs to say this –o say everything, once and for all, and he’s afraid that if he actually looks at Sherlock, all his courage will leave him and they’ll be back at square one.

“Please Sherlock, just. Listen to me. When you were away I stopped taking my pills. And the only thing it did was making me never want to wake up.”

“John,” Sherlock breathes.

“Listen. I didn’t want to wake up because nothing awaiting me could have been better than seeing you falling over and over again.”

Sherlock tries to turn around again and this time John lets him. Sherlock’s eyes seem huge and his lips are parted and he says:

“I had no idea, John. You must believe me, I didn’t know.”

“I know.”

And the thing is, John suddenly does. Or at least he knows that the Sherlock he now has in front of him, the one who was captured and beaten and couldn’t avoid having nightmares would never do that to him unless he didn’t know and that he completely and utterly erases the Sherlock who jumped from a roof and let John grieve for two years. It’s as if, until now, John hadn’t been able to reconcile them as the same person, had desperately wanted to keep them apart even though he is in love with them both. As if, in order not to go mad, it had been essential not to acknowledge that Sherlock would never have done this to him had he known.

“I know,” John repeats, and he does.

Sherlock is still looking at him, his neck strangely twisted and John can’t stand it anymore. He feels raw and bare and so utterly devastated by what happened to them. Two people, John thinks, two people shouldn’t be so close after everything that happened that should have driven them apart. They shouldn’t be standing in the same room, standing mere inches apart from each other and barely able to breathe because they are so close. Two people shouldn’t feel this for each other. Shouldn’t let nightmares become dreams. But they both did and John knows what the admission cost Sherlock, because saying that your nightmares weren’t that important is as close to an eternal love declaration than anything else could ever be.

So John kisses Sherlock. He kisses Sherlock because if he doesn’t kiss him now, when Sherlock looks so raw and open and actually confessed about not taking his pills, John will never kiss him. So John kisses him, his lips on Sherlock’s and Sherlock doesn’t kiss him back. John’s lips are pressed against Sherlock’s and they’re both breathing hard and John says:

“Please. Please Sherlock. Open your mouth, please.”

And then Sherlock does.

And it’s both wonderful and terrifying and John is so in love, and he’s kissing Sherlock and his lips are soft and wet and open, welcoming John’s lips and John’s tongue and John doesn’t think about it twice, he kisses Sherlock again and again. Sherlock is much more than a nightmare, Sherlock is much more than a dream. He’s John’s entire life and nothing can be better than this.

This is a dream, John thinks. This is hope.

\---

When John was born, he only could only have nightmares. That was ok, his mother said, while kissing Harry goodnight.

That was ok.

And, once upon a time, John fell in love and Sherlock died and John thought he would never get over it. But now Sherlock is alive again, and John is in love with him and Sherlock knows it

Sherlock is John’s dream.


End file.
